adminBusiness Correspondent
ZIMTRADE Chief Executive Ms Sithembile Pilime has urged the Government to offer incentives to local industries that carry out market research and solo exhibitions in other countries and increase export markets.
Speaking in Bulawayo recently, Ms Pilime said in countries such as South Africa, the Government supported companies that wanted to venture into foreign markets.
“The fact is that our companies do not have the incentives that their counterparts in other countries have when they do market research. In South Africa, companies go for trade exhibitions on their own because they are self sufficient and if they don’t have the funds, their government is ready to support,” said the ZimTrade CEO.
She said because of the decade-long recession many companies were unable to fund their market research activities.
“We did go through a difficult period and as things are improving now we need to start looking at those issues if our industry is to rise,” said Ms Pilime.
She said there was also a need for more resources to be availed to ZimTrade so that it could carry out thorough market research in foreign countries.
She said most of the times ZimTrade does market research outside the country, it was done in a short time due to limited resources.
“We need to put adequate resources and do market research. These researches are critical if we intent to increase exports for our industries,” said Ms Pilime.
“We had a visit by an officer from Enterprise Mauritius, our counterparts from Mauritius, who said when they do their sole exhibition every year in Zimbabwe and they use about $100 000 and we allocate something like $20 000 and that’s a mere pittances and we can’t do much with that. Our researchers need time to carry out research.”
ZimTrade has done a number of market researches in South Sudan, Africa’s newest state, where various business opportunities were discovered.
Recently, it took another research in Northern Mozambique were opportunities were discovered in mining, agriculture and many other sectors.
Online Reporter